Robert Redford, left, and Paul Newman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, 1969.

I first met Paul Newman in 1968, when George Roy Hill, the director of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, introduced us in New York City. When the studio didn't want me for the film  it wanted somebody as well known as Paul  he stood up for me. I don't know how many people would have done that; they would have listened to their agents or the studio powers.

The friendship that grew out of the experience of making that film and The Sting four years later had its genesis in the fact...